Years Between
by GrapeLeaf
Summary: Didn't you think that Laguna, Kiros and Ward were awesome? Don't you wish they'd been featured more in the game? Me too! This story centers on them, and takes place at the time when the main heros (Squall etc) would have been around 5 or 6. The three re-g
1. Chapter One

  
  
"Checking out, sir?"  
  
"Yes," he answered quietly.  
  
"Did you enjoy your stay here?"  
  
"It was very refreshing."  
  
"And how will you be paying today, sir?"  
  
"Will you accept credit?"  
  
The lady behind the counter looked up sharply. Very few people offered to pay in credit these days. It seemed that the war, and the threat of even more war, made everyone paranoid; everyone seemed to have a vendetta against someone. "I'll need a last name then, sir," she said in a stern voice.  
  
"Don't you have one of your own?" he asked, trying to lighten the situation.  
  
She looked up at him and frowned. "Hm. Funny," she said, without a hint of a smile.  
  
He sighed. "Seagill," he said resignedly, and handed her a credit slip.  
  
As he walked out of the Galbadia Hotel into the cold night air, Kiros found himself thinking once again about the many nights he had spent there with his friends, over five years ago. Back then, he reflected, he hadn't really thought of their situation as "war" for some reason. He supposed he hadn't taken it very seriously at the time. At least, not until having been thrown off a cliff after being cornered by enemy soldiers. That had a way of changing one's perspective.  
  
He found himself walking through the open door of a junk shop once more, as he did every time he came to Deling City. The man behind the counter smiled at him warily. "Anything I can do for ya?" he asked.  
  
"I doubt it," Kiros said with a small smile, as he reached back into a bag he kept strapped to his shoulders and drew out his two long katal.  
  
"Take what you want!" the man behind the counter suddenly shouted in a shaky voice, and backed away from the register with both hands in the air.  
  
Kiros shook his head sadly. "I just want to know if there is any way in this world, or in any world, that I could possibly even dare to hope that I might get these upgraded to something stronger, or if I should just give up asking once and for all." The man stared at him, not sure if he believed he wasn't in any danger. "In other words, can I remodel?"  
  
The man put his hands down and gestured for Kiros to come closer. "Lemme see," he said, as he took one of the katal from him. "Whaddya have with you?"  
  
"Hm," Kiros said, thinking of the very few items he still carried with him. "Adamentine. Betrayal sword, but only one... some screws. And a Mesmerize blade."  
  
"Well," the man said, looking over both katal with interest, "you already got Mesmerize blades here. You want to remodel, you're gonna want another Betrayal sword, or maybe two of those Tonberry knives. You get those things and bring them to a guy I know in Timber. He's been working on inventing something with Tonberry knives."  
  
"Where would I get those?" Kiros asked, already knowing what his answer was going to be.  
  
"The hell should I know?! From a Tonberry I guess!"  
  
"Thanks," he said in a friendly voice, and took both katal carefully out of the man's hands.  
  
He'd been in the junk shop about five times in the last year, and each time, he'd had nearly the same exact conversation with the man there, complete with his hysterics over seeing the weapons. The last few times he had gone back, he had only done so out of curiosity as to whether or not the conversation would change at all. And he still had never seen a Tonberry. He laughed softly to himself. He really did want to remodel, and he supposed it was time to find out about getting the knives he kept hearing about. Those, he figured, he could take in a battle, if he could manage to find them. As for the remodeling itself, it would have to wait until he could get back to the rest of his money.   
  
Five or so years earlier when he had been in the army, he had been one of the only men in his squadron to keep a small amount of his pay every week, and put it away for emergencies. The last four years, he thought with a touch of humor, had been an emergency. There was very little work for someone whose only useful skills were fighting, backflips, and the ability to laugh at himself.  
  
Kiros slipped the katal back into the long heavy pockets he had made into his backpack, and pulled his black coat tighter around him. It was by far the coldest winter he remembered, and Deling City felt more like Trabia.  
  
He began to walk to the border of the city, where, he decided, he would rent a car and drive to Timber. He had just enough money for the car and fuel, and eating would have to wait until he got his hands on the gil that he had put away.   
  
"Damn this cold," a woman muttered as he passed her on the street. Kiros nodded and walked on. It was better, he'd learned, not to engage in conversation with strangers these days. Passing comments were all people seemed willing to give to one another anymore.  
  
He was just at the border of the town, and could see the neon Car Rental sign, when he heard a girl's shrill scream. It had the breathy quality of someone who had spent most of her voice on screaming already, and there was such hopelessness and sorrow in it, that Kiros could almost feel it himself, as he turned to see who had made the sound.  
  
Looking back toward the street, he saw a tiny figure running out of the darkness between two deserted buildings, in his direction. There were four heavily armed men chasing after her, and they all wore Galbadian army uniforms. He didn't have time to wonder what they could possibly be doing to her, as he reached behind him, grabbed one katal, and slipped it onto his hand. As the little girl ran towards him, he held the katal out to his side, away from her. She saw him, and as he looked quickly into her large wet eyes, he saw more despair and confusion than actual terror.   
  
Now sobbing and out of breath, the child ran to him, and he picked her up easily with one arm. She clung to his neck and he angled himself quickly toward the men who had been chasing her, holding the one katal out in front of him, pointing towards the men, and shielding the little girl. They slowed down to a stop when they saw him.  
  
"Put her down!" one of them ordered him.  
  
The girl held him tighter. She was trying to say something, but he could barely understand her through her sobbing. "I don't want to go with them," she finally managed.  
  
"It's okay," he said. "What do they want with you?"  
  
"To take me away," she whispered sadly.  
  
All four men had their guns drawn and took aim at him. The one who had ordered him to put the girl down had his gun trained on him. Kiros, as a soldier himself, could tell by the man's intensity, and the quietness of his gun hand, that he was a sharpshooter. This one could put a bullet in his head without even grazing the girl.  
  
"What do you want with her?" he asked, hoping to at least buy some time.  
  
"Just put her down!" one of the other men said. This soldier's voice sounded nervous, and he was young, and Kiros knew that in a moment of panic, the man could fire on both of them at any second.  
  
"You have to understand," Kiros said in what he hoped was a clear and reasonable voice, as he still held the one katal toward all four men, "that I can't do that until I know what you want with her."  
  
The sharpshooter relaxed the tiniest bit, but didn't lower his gun. "She ran away from home," he said. "No one here is going to hurt her, we just have to bring her home. Just drop your weapon and put her down. This is none of your business."  
  
The girl took her arms from around his neck and made an attempt to push her dark hair away from her face and wipe her eyes at the same time. "Mommy is gone and I can't find my daddy," she said, as tears ran down her face. "I don't want to go with those men."  
  
"Do they want to hurt you?" he asked her, not taking his eyes off the men.  
  
She started crying again, harder this time, but he felt her shake her head. "But I don't want to go with them," she repeated, making his situation more complicated. He couldn't let these men with guns take a child with them against her will. "They told me that my mommy..." she began, but ended in choked sobs again.  
  
Kiros thought it over, trying to come to a reasonable solution. If all they wanted was to bring her home, he figured that she must have been from some important political or military family. And, he thought, what would soldiers want with a little girl? On the other hand, he told himself, you could never be too sure. People were crazy. "I'll tell you what," he said cautiously to the soldiers. "We can all take her home to her parents. You can keep your guns on me. I keep my weapon. If one of you tries to hurt her, I'll kill you. If I try to hurt her, you can kill me. Try to understand my situation," he said.  
  
The men, all but the sharpshooter, looked nervously at one another, but they didn't open fire on him. This told him that they probably did not mean her any harm, but he still didn't hold with armed soldiers chasing one obviously traumatized little girl.  
  
He saw a man run up behind the soldiers and stop in his tracks when he saw Kiros holding the girl. The man immediately drew his gun and Kiros knew in an instant that there was not going to be any reasoning with this man. "Put her down!" he bellowed.  
  
The girl looked sharply in the direction of the voice. "Daddy!" she wailed, and tried to slide herself out of his grip. Kiros let her down gently. She pushed past the armed soldiers and ran to the man whose face Kiros could not see, but who obviously was her father. The man knelt on the ground as she ran to him, put his gun back in its holster, and caught her in both arms. He could still hear her crying, and he could see by the man's shaking shoulders that he was crying too.  
  
"It's okay, angel," the man said through his tears as he held the little girl.  
  
"I want mommy back," she cried.  
  
"I do, too," Kiros heard the man say.  
  
  



	2. Chapter Two

  
  
"Of course," Kiros muttered to himself as the car slowed to a stop right outside of Timber. The heat hadn't worked for the entire drive, but had just decided to kick in the moment before he ran out of gas.  
  
The radio was still on, scanning automatically through the local stations as the car began to give out. He caught tidbits of the news and of songs as the stations changed. "...result of the war..." "two hundred Galbadian soldiers..." "gas prices on the rise..." "died in a car crash early yesterday..."   
  
"Nothing but good news as usual," he commented ironically.  
  
"...reach me out then, you will know that you are not dreaming..." the radio went on.  
  
Kiros tuned in the last station when he heard the familiar melody and voice. He smiled as the song ended. He'd met her a few times himself before "Eyes On Me" had been released. There was dead air on the station after the song, and it gave him an eerie, lonely feeling, so he switched off the radio and got out of the car.  
  
It was, he thought, about two in the morning and he now had to walk a few blocks into Timber, instead of driving in a nice, suddenly warm car. He would also have to leave the car there, go to the Timber Car Rental, and have them come and get it. He wondered how much they would charge him for that little favor. He also wondered whether, if he mentioned the fact that the heater had been broken, they'd give him a break. But then again, he didn't like to harp on things like that.   
  
"Try to be a nice guy," he muttered sarcastically to himself, "try to give people a break, save a little girl..." He remembered that he didn't want to think about the weird scene with the little girl, and her father, who seemed familiar to him for some reason, even though he hadn't gotten a good look at him.   
  
  
Snow began to fall as he walked towards Timber. Kiros once again pulled his coat tighter around him. "'Damn this cold weather' is right," he said to himself. He hated the cold.   
  
  
-------------------  
  
  
Timber Car Rental had been kind enough to ride the few blocks out of town and tow the car back without charging him for the fuel. They understood that there were no gas stations on the way from Deling City to Timber, and Kiros was thankful for that.   
  
By the time he had walked into the business district of the city of Timber, most of the shops were closed anyway, and the Timber Hotel was a few steps away. He was hungry, but the idea of sleeping in a warm bed took precedence over eating, so he stumbled tiredly into the hotel and once again used a credit slip.  
  
The young girl behind the check in desk at the hotel was pretty, and she asked him with a smile if he would need anything during his stay.   
  
"I'll let you know," he said, not wanting to be rude to her. It had been a long time since a stranger had been even remotely friendly, and he didn't want to discourage it in anyone. "But," he said under his breath as he walked toward the elevator, "I think you're a little too young for me."  
  
Kiros awoke suddenly in his dark hotel room and found himself reaching for his katal beside his bed before he was even fully aware of what he was doing. He fumbled around in the dark and unfamiliar place with his hands, before coming in contact with the cold steel blade on the dresser. He held his breath, listening intently for whatever might have woken him up as he slipped his hand, quietly as he could, into one of the katal, and gripped the internal handle.  
  
"Just nerves," he told himself, as he allowed himself to breathe again and let go of his weapon. But as he turned the light on, he realized that he still had an uneasy feeling that he couldn't shake. Something just didn't feel quite right, and he began to wonder if he had simply been alone for too long. Since parting ways with his comrades a year or so before, he hadn't really been close with anyone. In fact, when he thought of it, he realized that not many people even knew he existed anymore. He had always been quiet and tried to stay in the background of each situation, but had never been so isolated for such a long period of time. He assumed that anyone who had known of him would have filed him under "Missing In Action" and forgotten about him. Well, almost anyone. He realized with a small amount of surprise, that he had probably talked to himself more than he had talked to anyone over the last year.  
  
He sighed and turned over. He could see the barest, faintest lightening of the dark sky, from the part in the curtains. The clock on the dresser across the room read 4:23 A.M.  
  
Something was wrong; he could feel it in his chest, and his shaking hands.   
  
He was too tired to get out of bed. It was obscenely cold out there and he wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and go back to sleep. But they wouldn't stay closed. He sat up and toyed with his unbraided, wavy hair.  
  
"Damnit," he muttered, and got out of bed.  
  
  
---------------  
  
  
Kiros wondered what he must have looked like, should anyone see him as he walked down the deserted street. His coat was so bulky over his old sweater, he almost mistook himself for Ward as he caught his reflection in the window of the weapons shop. He wondered what Ward was up to, and just then, he missed him terribly.   
  
As he stared at his reflection, almost mesmerized by it, he realized that he even looked lonely. He narrowed his eyes and tried to make his most impressive dangerous face, then laughed at himself and continued walking. He could hear a train in the distance, approaching the bridge ahead of him, and he wondered who would be taking a train at this hour, where they could be going and for what purpose. He wondered what kind of lives they would lead.  
  
"Train train, take us away," he sang under his breath. But his own low voice sounded eerie and uncomfortable, so he stopped. Besides, he reminded himself, he couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle on it.   
  
He came to a halt on the overpass above the train tracks. He saw the light of the train heading for the tunnel under him, and the figure of a man, from what he could tell by the broadness and height, swaying precariously on the small ledge outside of the guard rail.  
  
Kiros was physically startled and almost reacted immediately, but a quick thought told him that a sudden movement could scare the other person even more, and send him falling toward the train tracks. He didn't think that the fall alone would be enough to necessarily kill someone, if they were very lucky. Damage them a great deal, yes, the man would be looking at some broken bones at the very least. But the oncoming train would crush him flat.  
  
Kiros didn't know what to do. He knew he had to do something, but couldn't risk scaring him by calling out to him. He also knew he couldn't waste any more time.  
  
"Hey," he said softly. The man, who had dark hair, which seemed to be tucked into his collar, didn't seem to hear him. He walked a little closer. "Don't - don't be startled or anything, okay?" Kiros said quietly. "You're kind of in a dangerous place there-"  
  
"'S'alright," a rough, shaky voice answered. "Not gonna jump..."   
  
The train was nearing the tunnel, slowing down, but not enough that it would stop in time, should the man fall onto the tracks. Kiros came closer as the man swayed. The hand he had been using to hold onto the guard rail fell away limply, and now he was balanced on the small ledge. A small gust of wind would be enough to knock him off. Kiros was now right behind him; he could see that the man was shaking, and he found that he was shaking as well. He had come out for a walk because he couldn't sleep, and now he was about to watch someone throw himself in front of a train.  
  
"Not gonna jump," the man repeated as the train came closer. "But I might fall..."  
  
He let himself go limp and began to fall forward more quickly than Kiros thought he would have. Without even thinking about it, he reacted, and managed to hook the man's sleeve with his fingertips. It was enough for him to grab onto his arm and pull him back.   
  
The man didn't resist as he pulled him back over the guard rail. He only seemed semi aware of what was going on anyway. His head fell forward and his shoulder length black hair fell out of the collar.  
  
"Mother of Ifrit," Kiros said, breathing hard and shaking with adrenaline. The man fell to his knees, and Kiros with him. The train passed under the bridge below them, sending a gust of wind up through the grating, which blew the man's damp hair out of his face.   
  
Kiros almost fell over in shock.  
  
"Laguna," he whispered.  
  
  



	3. Chapter Three

  
Laguna looked up slowly, not even entirely sure where he was, much less who was kneeling across from him. He had a few moments of total non - reality, and for a moment couldn't remember what year it was or how he had gotten where he was. Either he was somehow in the past, or a dead man was looking at him, looking, from what Laguna could see through his hazy, swimmy vision, just as shocked as he felt.  
  
He wanted to ask where, when, why and how all at once, but didn't manage to do anything but start sobbing into his hands.  
  
He felt Kiros place a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't say anything. The reality of seeing Kiros once more finally hit him, and he decided he wasn't dreaming.  
  
"So you're alive," Laguna said, as he tried to pull himself together. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and, looking up, he saw something like guilt in his friend's face.  
  
"Yeah, I'm alive," Kiros answered. "You mean you thought - "  
  
"Everyone thought so," Laguna said. "But no one really knew you except Ward and me, so no one knew." He took a deep breath and felt his mind clear, just enough so that he could understand the situation he was in. "God," he said, "if I were you, I would've slapped me stupid by now."  
  
"I don't have to slap you stupid," Kiros said, and Laguna could hear the panicked anger in his voice. "What the hell is going on? What was this?!" He gestured to the guard rail where Laguna had tottered precariously moments ago. "This isn't because you thought... this wasn't about..."  
  
"Don't flatter yourself," Laguna answered with a weak smile. Kiros didn't smile back; instead he looked frightened and somewhat dangerous. But then Kiros had always looked dangerous to others. It had kept him out of as many fights as it had started. "Partly, maybe," Laguna relented. "I dunno. I'm not really right in the head tonight and there was a couple seconds... well more than a couple I guess... where it all went to hell. I didn't know there was a train coming. That wasn't the answer I was looking for." He looked through the grating to the railroad tracks below, and was struck with the horror of what he had nearly done. "I didn't really wanna jump in the first place, I think," he said. "But by the time I got here, so damn drunk and, you know. I guess I woulda died, huh?"  
  
He thought about what had brought him out on a lonely, drunken morning walk in the first place, and took a shuddering deep breath. Panic filled his chest so quickly that it hurt, and sobered him almost immediately. He tried to force the tears back, but they came anyway. Reality came once more and hit him with terrifying power. It really was real. It really had happened.  
  
"Let's go back," Kiros said gently, and helped him up.  
  
"Back? Back where, I don't even know where I was."  
  
"Just come with me," Kiros said, steadying him as he tried to walk.  
  
  
  
----------------------  
  
  
The sound of a screaming baby filled his head. The baby was alone, abandoned, and starving to death. Its father had left and its mother was dead by its side.   
  
The woman next to the child had long brown hair and was splattered with blood. Her eyes were open, a look of terror, loneliness and betrayal frozen on her still face.  
  
Laguna took her in his arms, knowing, from having lived the scene so many times, that she would be cold.   
  
"This is where I wake up screaming," he told himself in the dream. He knew the dream down to the last detail, from the chill of her skin to her blue fingernails.   
  
But this time it didn't stop. Instead, he felt something wet on his shoulder. As still as Raine was in his arms, he couldn't let her go, even in the dream. Still trying awkwardly to hold her, he turned his head, and saw a dainty, bloody hand on his shoulder.   
  
"You could have stayed with me one more night," a cracking, dry voice told him. "One more night would have made all the difference."  
  
"I don't wanna be in this dream anymore," Laguna said weakly.  
  
She turned his face to her with her cold hand. "Just reach me out, then, you will know that you are not dreaming," she said conversationally.  
  
He looked at her bruised and bloody face. "Don't say that," he whispered. "Just leave that alone." It was his song, she had written it for him and he had so loved to listen to it on the radio. He wanted to keep it for himself. This dream was about to take that away from him. "No more, please," he said.  
  
  
  
-------------------  
  
  
"Hey. Laguna."  
  
He sat straight up in the bed. Kiros was half lying down on the small sofa on the other side of the room, idly braiding his hair.  
  
"You want to tell me what's going on?" he asked. "I know that you called for Raine, but there's more, isn't there?"  
  
Laguna pulled the blankets around him, feeling cold and unbearably hot at the same time. No, he didn't want to talk about it. "I'm okay," he said, trying to convince himself as much as Kiros.  
  
"Okay," Kiros said. "I'm here if you want to talk to me."  
  
Laguna leaned back against the headboard of the bed. He could hardly believe that Kiros was truly alright, and with him again. He could believe even less that, a few hours ago, Kiros had stopped him from falling in front of an oncoming train. He knew that his comrade went around helping people all the time, sometimes without even realizing he was doing it, but it was his own actions that shocked him. He had been a step away from being killed.   
  
"It's more than just missing her," he said suddenly to Kiros, surprising himself. "I do miss her, but it's more than that. It's knowing that I wasn't there when I should have been. When I promised I would be. That she was alone and she was scared."  
  
Kiros nodded sympathetically. Laguna knew he had told him all of this many times since his wife's death, and would probably tell him a million more times. "There was no way you could have gotten back," Kiros said, also for the millionth time. "You only went away so that you could find Elle."  
  
"Right," Laguna answered bitterly. "And once I found her, I let her go again. First Elle, then Raine. And knowing that I have a child out there somewhere. I see little kids sometimes and I start thinking to myself 'what if that one's mine,' you know?" He closed his eyes before going on. "Then I heard that you were gone, and Ward, forget it, Ward went nuts. And just when I thought that I lost everyone I could possibly lose, you know. Julia," he finished weakly.  
  
Kiros frowned. "Julia?" he asked. "What about her?"  
  
Laguna looked up in slow surprise. "You didn't hear about Julia," he said softly.  
  
  



	4. Chapter Four

  
Kiros didn't often show outward surprise, but the shock he felt at what Laguna had told him made him sit for a second with his mouth hanging open. "What?" he finally said, feeling somewhat stupid.  
  
"Last night," Laguna went on. "or maybe it was two nights ago. What's today? Anyway, it was some stupid accident. Godammit," he said, suddenly angry. "She has a little kid, you know? And it's right before her kid's birthday."  
  
"That's right," Kiros said quietly, "she and Caraway..." He trailed off, as he realized why the man with the little girl had been so familiar to him. It was general Caraway and his young daughter - Julia's daughter - that he had seen the night before. The little girl's hysterics finally made sense to him, and he swallowed the bitter taste that was suddenly in his mouth.   
  
"What is it?" Laguna said, watching him carefully.  
  
"I think I might have heard part of it on the radio, that's all," he said. The last thing he wanted to do was tell Laguna that he had seen Julia's daughter and she was a complete wreck.  
  
Laguna nodded. "Yeah, I guess you might've," he said. "It's all over the radio. 'Popular singer Julia Heartilly - Caraway was killed last night in a traffic accident at the age of twenty eight. She is survived by her husband, General Caraway of the Galbadian army, and her young daughter,'" he went on, imitating the cold voice of the newsreaders he had heard. "Like it's nothing," he said. "Like it's some piece of gossip, you know? And I wonder sometimes if in Winhill..."  
  
Laguna didn't finish the sentence and Kiros didn't ask. He knew that Laguna was thinking about what people might have said about his wife after she had died.   
  
"It doesn't matter," Laguna finally said. "I don't really have much of anything anymore. I'm not a solider, a husband, or even much of a writer anymore. I tried to go back to writing but, I don't know. I think it's just gone."  
  
"You never lose a gift like that," Kiros said. He remembered some of the things Laguna had written, specifically some of his work that he never published. He had thought it would be too passionately political at the time and had been his own worst censor. And it always amazed Kiros how Laguna, who was the laziest speaker he had ever heard, had perfect grammar when he wrote. Kiros might have grown up as a soldier, but certainly not to the exclusion of everything else, and he knew art when he read it. "An artist never totally loses their gift," he told Laguna. "Talent doesn't just disappear one day."  
  
"Thanks," Laguna said, and Kiros knew that he didn't believe him.  
  
"So," Kiros said, purposely changing the subject, "is the Adel Resistance in Esthar still courting you as their leader?"  
  
Laguna laughed cynically, a cold, hard sound that Kiros had never heard from him before. It made his stomach jump. "They were never serious about that," Laguna said listlessly. "Plus, now that Adel's gone, they really don't have much to resist from her, right? Except her followers, but no one knows who they might be. I guess they sorta fell apart." He looked at Kiros and managed a weak smile. "Well," he said with a sigh, "why not tell me what you've been up to? What brought you to Timber? You didn't come all the way out here to rescue me, did you?" He smiled again, and for a second he looked bright and sincere, as he had when they were soldiers together.  
  
"Don't flatter yourself," he said with a smirk. It was obvious to him that Laguna wanted to change the subject, but didn't want to stop talking yet. "It sounds funny, but I came out here to talk to a man about Tonberry knives. I wanted to upgrade the katal and those sounded like the best things to use. But I can't find any."  
  
Laguna nodded and absently scratched his head in a gesture that Kiros had seen him make a million times. "Yeah, I've heard of Tonberries," he said. "A few of them have made their way to Centra I think, and that area. I hear they're really vicious though. Were you going to fight them all on your own?"  
  
Kiros shrugged. He hadn't actually thought about that part yet. "I don't know, really. I guess it might be dangerous. Plus," he added with a smile, "I'm not as effective without you and Ward by my side. By the way, you said you'd heard from Ward. What's he up to?"  
  
Laguna frowned for a second, then began to smile. He giggled for a moment, then contained himself. He began to make Kiros nervous, because suddenly his eyes looked a little too bright, and he started to laugh out loud.   
  
"What?" Kiros asked. "What's funny?"  
  
Laguna didn't answer, but seemed to find his question even funnier. He pounded his fist on the bed as he laughed harder. His eyes were wet and Kiros suspected that he was laughing and crying at the same time. He realized that his friend was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, and he sat back and waited for Laguna to let him in on what was so hilarious.  
  
"He's..." Laguna began in a choked voice, "actually," he said, composing himself and hitching in his breath, "actually we were both... we were looking for you. Ironically, we were both..." he started laughing again, and fell to his side, "looking... for you!"  
  
Kiros didn't quite see the humor in that. Instead, he felt a terrible guilt, that he had not been able to contact them and let them know he was at least alright. In a way, he felt responsible for Laguna, and wished that he had been there for him in what must have been his worst year since Raine's death.  
  
Laguna sighed as his laughter died down. "He's in Esthar," he said, and cleared his throat. "We looked for you in the Desert Prison, because when Ward worked there he really learned how to get around there. Then we split up."  
  
"I'm sorry," Kiros said.  
  
"Why?" Laguna asked, looking naively surprised. "What did you do?"  
  
Kiros wanted to laugh. His friend could seem so innocent at times. "I'm just sorry for disappearing on you. I had no way of contacting you. I'll tell you all about it another time."  
  
"Do you think we should go to Esthar for Ward?" Laguna asked. "Or should we let him worry some more."  
  
Kiros smiled. "That's mean," he said, knowing that Laguna was joking. "There's no underwater train to Esthar. We'll have to take the shuttle boat."  
  
  
  



	5. Chapter Five

  
  
Ward stared icily at the doctor. If the idiot couldn't understand sign language, he'd have to start writing it out for him, and by then he thought he'd have to start hitting him as well. "Idiot!" he tried to say, as he often forgot he couldn't use his voice when he got angry. All that came out was a raspy grunt.  
  
"If you can't tell me vat you vant," the doctor said, "zen you are vasting my time and I cannot help you, stupid soldier!" He shoved the picture of Ward, Kiros and Laguna back into Ward's hand.  
  
Ward glowered at him. Dr. Odine obviously didn't know how close he was to having his head twisted off his shoulders. Instead, he dragged the doctor over to the desk, took one of his many papers and a pen, and wrote the word "WHERE?" in large letters.  
  
"Vere vat?" Dr. Odine said impatiently.   
  
Ward pointed to Kiros in the picture once more.  
  
"Vere is ze picture? In your hand!"  
  
Ward took a deep breath, calmed himself, and hoped that a doctor this stupid would never have to operate on him. He took the pen and paper again and wrote, politely, he thought, "have you seen the man in this picture?" He shoved the paper to Dr. Odine and pointed once again to Kiros.  
  
"I saw him ven he vas vith you," he said, and was about to turn away. Suddenly he turned back. "But I did see him one time after zat."  
  
Ward urgently nodded for him to go on.  
  
"I saw him once in Deling City, many months ago. Let me see... yes, I think zat would have been just before he died."   
  
With that, he turned and left, leaving Ward standing stunned in one of the many rooms of Dr. Odine's laboratory.  
  
  
A few hours later, Ward sat alone, drinking a cup of coffee outside of the Esthar City mall. He looked around him, trying not to think of what Odine had told him.   
  
Esthar certainly was growing into a tremendous, and tremendously advanced city. But, Ward thought, it might still take years for it to reach its full potential. He thought that someday it could be the technological capital of the world, if it kept growing the way it was.  
  
And anyway, he told himself, Dr. Odine had no proof that Kiros was dead. He had probably just heard rumors like the few other people who had known him. No one had actually SEEN him die by the hand of another Galbadian soldier. And also, Ward reminded himself, one of the rumors he'd heard from a soldier had been that he himself had killed Kiros, and how ridiculous was THAT? No, he thought to himself, Kiros is alive. Dying just wasn't his style.  
  
  
"WARD!"  
  
Ward nearly jumped out of his skin, and spilled his coffee as he reached for his harpoon. The idea of someone knowing his name startled him enough so that he was ready to fight immediately.  
  
"Hey Ward!"  
  
He turned around to see none other than Laguna Loire running toward him. By god, Laguna had aged, he thought. He'd only seen him weeks ago, but he looked like he'd been through the mill. Ward figured he must have heard about Julia as well.   
  
Laguna plowed into him and hugged him. "Hey man!" he said.   
  
Ward smiled and mouthed the words, "have you heard any news about Kiros?"  
  
"Yeah, whatever," Laguna said, "I never understand when you do that. Kiros always does though."  
  
Ward nodded frantically and motioned to Laguna that he did indeed want to talk about Kiros.  
  
"Speaking of Kiros," Laguna said, smiling.  
  
Ward was too excited to pay much heed to the fact that when Laguna smiled, he did so through an underlying sadness these days.  
  
"Did you hear something about him?" Ward asked, only mouthing the words and knowing Laguna wouldn't understand him.  
  
"Guess what? I found him!"  
  
Ward felt a thrill of happiness and relief. Kiros was alive. The filthy sorceress' followers hadn't killed him. He grabbed Laguna and lifted him off the ground, nearly throwing him over his shoulder.  
  
"Wooohoo!" Laguna shouted. "I always knew that stupid report was a crock!" Laguna said as Ward let him down. "Actually to be honest, he sorta found me. But, that's a story for another time."  
  
Ward was tall enough that he could look over Laguna's head, and coming up the street from the mall, was Kiros, impossible to miss, as hard as he tried to blend in. He had his braids tucked into a plain black shirt, but was head and shoulders taller than everyone except Ward himself.   
  
Ward ran to him, hugged him like he had hugged Laguna, then smacked him in the back of the head.  
  
"I take that to mean," Kiros said quietly, rubbing the back of his head, "that you're upset I was gone for so long."  
  
Laguna soon joined them. "What's he saying?" he asked Kiros.  
  
Ward gestured wildly, telling Kiros that he had been worried sick, and had heard reports that Adel's followers had found one of the three men that had imprisoned her. He tried dramatically to show Kiros that he had been frantic, and worried for Laguna too, especially now, when the last thing he needed was to be alone. Why hadn't Kiros been able to contact him? He and Laguna had managed to stay in touch after they'd had to separate. Had something happened to him?   
  
Kiros watched him patiently, occasionally nodding. Laguna watched it all with interest.  
  
"He says he missed me," Kiros said finally.  
  
Ward sighed. In truth, he knew that strangely enough, Kiros did understand him, as he did much of the time. In fact he was glad that Kiros had simplified what he had said, and left out the part about being worried about Laguna. He didn't want to remind Laguna that he needed to be worried over. Kiros was very tactful in that way.  
  
Laguna seemed to have sensed it anyway, and was more subdued than he was before.   
  
Ward took a pen out of his pocket and grabbed a napkin off a nearby table. He found it was easier to write things sometimes, as when he wanted to change the subject or talk about something out of the ordinary.   
  
"I found Doc Odine," he scribbled hastily.   
  
Laguna looked up at this quickly, with narrowed eyes. "What's he doing in Esthar?" he asked suspiciously. "He's supposed to be in hiding like we were."  
  
"Couldn't stay away from lab!" Ward wrote on the back of the napkin.  
  
Kiros peered over Laguna's shoulder at the napkin with interest. "What do you think?" he asked Laguna.  
  
"I think Ward needs to get a new notepad."  
  
"About Dr. Odine," Kiros said patiently.  
  
Laguna looked sharply from Kiros to Ward. Ward knew that a great deal of people who had dealt with Laguna in the past thought of him as a klutz, or just some goofy guy who didn't know which way was up. But Ward knew what he was like on a personal level, and was glad that he was on Laguna's good side. Laguna was loyal, smarter than he let on, protective, and dangerous when he was angry.  
  
"I think we should go see him," Laguna said softly.  
  
  
The atmosphere during the short ride to Dr. Odine's laboratory was subdued. Kiros told Ward and Laguna about how he had been found by some of Adel's followers and escaped very narrowly by jumping off of a bridge onto a moving train. Ward saw Laguna lower his eyes when Kiros mentioned that for some reason. He looked at Laguna and gave a questioning glance to Kiros, who shook his head discretely. Ward felt a surge of panic, but he wasn't sure why.  
  
"After that," Kiros went on, "I wasn't sure where to go. I found out that Adel still has a really strong following. There are plans to somehow bring her back, though I don't know how they could manage to even get to where she is. I mean, we really put her away."  
  
Ward nodded. They had indeed put Adel "away." Laguna had convinced the space program to use the Ragnarok to send Adel, still sealed, into space. After that, the Ragnarok had been lost.  
  
The people at the space program had been part of the Adel Resistance Group that had pursued Laguna as their leader. Laguna had declined at the time, to protect himself, his family, and Kiros and Ward from the publicity that would give them away to the sorceress' followers.   
  
After sending Adel away, he had found Ellone and sent her back to Winhill to be with Raine, but Laguna had not gone back, for fear of being followed. The last thing he wanted, he'd said, was to bring the sorceress' men into Winhill where they would be a threat to his family. He'd hoped to lie low until they lost track of him, and then return to his wife.   
  
Ward hastily tucked away the memories he had of the day Laguna had found out that his wife had died, and Ellone had been taken to an orphanage. There was no time now to dwell on things like that.  
  
"I knew that they knew who I was," Kiros went on. "And I didn't want to be a threat to you two, so I kept myself away from both of you."  
  
Ward held up three fingers, and wrapped his other hand around them, then made a fist. "We're a team," he said with those gestures. "We fight together."  
  
"I know," Kiros said, and looked down at the floor of the shuttle in guilt. "But I was afraid for both of you."  
  
  
The shuttle slowed smoothly to a halt close to Dr. Odine's laboratory, and Ward wondered what was so exciting to Odine that he'd been willing to risk going back to his lab in Esthar. He'd always thought of the doctor as one of the biggest morons he'd ever met.  
  
----------------  
  
"Good to see you, Doc," Laguna said quietly as they approached him from behind.  
  
Dr. Odine turned around and took a step back when he saw all three men in his lab.  
  
"I just told you," he said, pointing to Ward, "to go avay! And vat do you do! You come back vith ze freak and ze stupid one!"  
  
Ward started to walk briskly to Odine, but Laguna gently put his arm in front of him. Odine still backed up into the wall.  
  
"I am too busy for zis!" he said, trying to be more angry than intimidated.  
  
"No one is here to hurt you, Doc," Laguna said, with just the hint of a warning in his voice. "I just wanna ask you a few things."  
  
"Get it through your thick skull, you brain damaged soldier," Odine said, "I have nothing to tell you, and I cannot help you."  
  
"We can help each other," Laguna said mildly. "We all sorta were involved in getting rid of the sorceress, you helped by researching her powers and limitations, and practically designed the seal. Whether we like it or not, we're in it together."  
  
"It is over, you stupid man," Odine spat.  
  
"I don't think," Kiros said in a reasonable tone, "that it's necessary to keep on insulting Mr. Loire. Necessary, or particularly healthy."  
  
"It's okay," Laguna said, still staring at Odine, "he doesn't bother me. And anyway, it's not exactly over. They're still looking for all of us..."  
  
"Zat is vy it is better if ve go our separate vays," he said. "I don't see vy, Mr. Loire," he went on, adding a venomous tone when he said Laguna's name, "you insist on bothering me here. I have vork to do that your tiny brain would not grasp!"  
  
"If you don't want our help, that's cool too," Laguna said, once again ignoring the insult. He walked slowly towards Odine as if he didn't want to frighten him away. "But I still think you can help me. You're maybe the only person who knows just how the sorceress uses other girls and inhabits them. I know you took an interest in Elle just like Adel did. I figure maybe you know of a place where all those escaped little kids went, to get away from Adel."  
  
Odine was silent for a moment, then laughed, a short, barking sound. "You are still looking for zat kid? All of zis is about a stupid brat?"  
  
Before Dr. Odine saw what was coming, Laguna had slapped him, open handed, across the face. Dr. Odine was too stunned to move, and Laguna grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "Elle's not stupid," Laguna said harshly, "and she's not a brat. And I'll tell you something else, you callous, pompous ass, my own kid may be where Elle is, and your selfishness isn't going to keep me away from either of them."  
  
Dr. Odine looked toward Kiros or Ward for help. Ward shrugged in a satisfied way as if to say, "you had this coming." Kiros leaned back against the wall with his arms folded across his chest, and watched with interest.  
  
"I do not know vere ze girl is," Dr. Odine finally managed. "You rescued her... you sent her home, is all I know. But, zere might be an orphanage."  
  
Laguna's eyes flashed. "You know something," he said, pushing Dr. Odine against the wall. "And you're not telling me. I've been to every orphanage I could find and haven't found either of them. So, I'm giving you one more chance to tell me everything you know."  
  
Dr. Odine looked at Kiros, who smiled at him. Ward gripped his harpoon and also smiled.  
  
"Barbarians," Dr. Odine said, sneering. "If I tell you anything it vill cost me my life."  
  
Laguna let go of Odine's shirt, but didn't back off. "Then it's just a matter of who you want to get killed by, I guess," he said, letting his voice grow calm. "And look at it this way: if you tell me what you know, at least you'll be helping some kids in the process, and maybe if you're ever in trouble, you could come to us for help."  
  
"Come to you for help? Never!" he swore.  
  
"Alright, no more dramatics," Laguna said wearily. "It's pretty simple really. You're going to tell me what you know about the kids who escaped Adel's people and where they went, and we're going to leave. Or, you're not going to tell us, you'll be really sorry you didn't, and we'll leave."  
  
Odine trembled in outrage for a few moments. "Fine," he finally hissed, relenting. "Zere is an orphanage. Very few people have ever known of it. I don't know who runs it but I know zey have children from all over ze vorld. Zere vas talk zat ze people who run it took an interest in ze sorceress, and how to stop her. Zey vere interested in stopping ze hunt for little girls. Zat is vy it vas so secretive. I do not know vere it is, except it is somevere south, by ze sea. Zat is all I know and I only learned of it months ago!"  
  
Laguna looked over his shoulder and stared at Ward and Kiros. Excitement shone in his watering eyes.  
  
"Do you think that's enough to go on?" Kiros asked.  
  
"It has to be," Laguna said, and brushed past them both. "Let's go."  
  
"I'd like to talk to the doctor for a second first," Kiros said.   
  
Laguna nodded and wiped his eyes. "Okay, I'll be waiting for you outside, just hurry."   
  
Ward knew exactly what was going on and he couldn't wait for it to happen. Kiros was so good at what he did.  
  
"I'll tell you what I think," Kiros said softly, once Laguna had left.  
  
"Vy are you still here?! I don't care vat you zink!" Dr. Odine said.  
  
"That's okay, I'll tell you anyway. Humor me," he said, and approached Dr. Odine the same way Laguna had.  
  
Dr. Odine was beginning to get the idea that he was being intimidated, and the fact itself was enough to intimidate him even more. He waited silently for Kiros to go on.  
  
"I think you know a lot more than you told Mr. Loire."  
  
*Zhing!*  
  
Ward loved the look on people's faces the first time they heard the sound of the katal, when Kiros swept them from the sheathes so quickly.  
  
Odine stumbled back against the wall.  
  
  
A few minutes later, Ward walked out beside Kiros, leaving a stunned Dr. Odine bleeding the tiniest bit from a small nick on his throat.  
  
If there was one thing that Ward always respected and admired about Kiros Seagill, it was his way of getting things done quickly and efficiently.  
  
"Let's find a boat that goes south," Kiros said to Laguna.  
  
"Why?" Laguna asked, still agitated and ready to leave that very second.  
  
"We're going to see a Mr. Cid Kramer and his wife, who run an orphanage."  
  
  
  



	6. Chapter Six

  
Ward hated boats. He hated them worse than water shuttles. He hated them so badly, that just seeing one made his stomach clench and his whole body tense up, and he wanted to burn and destroy every single damned boat he saw.  
  
So when someone called "Land!" and he lifted his aching head up to peer over the rail (where he had been leaning and retching once more,) he wanted to shout and jump for joy. Unfortunately he could neither jump nor shout.  
  
Laguna had settled down after the first day on the boat. Laguna loved to be on ships and boats, the bastard. He'd spent the first night running around the deck saying "arrr" and "ahoy matey," to Kiros and Ward and anyone else who would listen. By the second night, he'd relaxed somewhat, and stood next to Ward (who was once again heaving into the water,) leaning on the railing and babbling about life and the sea in faraway, dreamy tones. Ward hadn't heard much over the sound of his own heartbeat in his temples, but occasionally Laguna would pat him on the back and ask him if he wanted something to eat, like a cracker.  
  
By the last night of traveling, Laguna was almost totally quiet, and nervously agitated. Ward supposed the reality of what might come next had finally settled in. He wished that Laguna didn't bottle up his feelings so much, and try to put on a merry demeanor for everyone else's sake. He did it so often that Ward worried he'd die of pretending before he hit thirty three.  
  
By the time land was in sight, Laguna was following Kiros all over the ship, a jittery, worried wreck. Kiros, of course, never wavered in his patience. Finally, he left Kiros and came to Ward, who was yet again leaning heavily over the railing, catching his breath.  
  
"So," Laguna said shakily. "You think they'll let us in once we're there?"  
  
Ward shook his head, and immediately had to close his eyes.  
  
Laguna cracked his knuckles. "I don't think so either." He chuckled softly. "Too bad we can't dress Kiros up like a girl and say he's my wife and we want to adopt a kid."  
  
The idea of Kiros dressed up as a woman made Ward laugh a little and forget his nausea momentarily.  
  
Kiros walked up beside Ward. "You okay?" he asked him.  
  
Ward looked up at him and frowned. "Do I look okay?" the look said.  
  
"Did you get any sleep at all?" he asked Ward.   
  
Ward shook his head slowly.   
  
"Well, it'll be over soon enough."  
  
Ward nodded, and considered living wherever they landed, forever and ever, so that he'd never have to get on the boat again. He gestured weakly to Kiros, first moving his hand like an airplane or air shuttle, then turning out his empty pockets and shrugging. "Too bad we're too poor to fly," he said with those signs.  
  
Kiros smiled and nodded. "Would be faster too," he said. "All this worrying and waiting can't be good for Laguna."  
  
"You call me?" Laguna said distractedly, breaking his reverie and looking at Kiros.  
  
"No," Kiros said. "Looks like we're almost there. It's a good thing because I don't think the other people on this boat like us very much. I think they know we're not here to see the chocobos."  
  
Ward nodded again. The rest of the passengers were indeed going to chocobo forest as part of a group tour. He didn't think they would be too upset when the three last minute extras disappeared from the crowd.  
  
  
-----------------  
  
  
"If there's one thing we're good at," Kiros thought to himself as he cut a path through the dense foliage, "it's running through the forest together."  
  
"I think Ward wants to stop for a second," Laguna said tiredly.   
  
Kiros looked at Ward, raising an eyebrow. Ward shrugged, and Kiros understood that Ward had made no such request, but Laguna probably wanted to rest. Which was just as well, he thought. Laguna looked like hell.  
  
As they all sat down in a clearing, and Laguna began digging through his bag for some of the food and water he had brought from the ship, Kiros found himself looking at Laguna every few seconds, worriedly.   
  
He was only thirty two, and Kiros couldn't tell if he looked older or younger than his age. He seemed to go back and forth. Laguna looked up and briefly met his eyes as he handed him a bottle of water, then he looked away just as quickly.  
  
Kiros knew how desperately he was trying to hide from everyone again. Most people would think he was simply distracted or had his mind elsewhere, but Kiros knew otherwise. He didn't miss much. Ward frequently told him that.  
  
  
He could remember clearly the day they had all found out about Raine. Laguna had found Elle and sent her back to Winhill, and they had banished the sorceress weeks before. Laguna had been torn between wanting, or rather, needing to go back - and protecting his family by staying away. In the end they had opted to sneak back to Winhill, even if only to make sure everything was alright. Laguna would see Raine, and if everything was well and there were no soldiers in town looking for him, he'd stay for the birth of their baby. After that, he'd had no idea what he would do. He had left Winhill in the first place to find Ellone, but none of them had expected that they'd be the ones to capture the sorceress. Laguna, he thought, often wished they hadn't.  
  
  
They'd gone back to Winhill with no trace of Adel's followers in their wake, and they had all begun to feel somewhat at ease. Perhaps, Ward had told him, everything would be alright. Kiros thought he knew better at the time, but brushed the feeling away and attributed it to nerves.  
  
It was dusk when they arrived, and Laguna had sprinted ahead of them, as if being pulled along by the sheer joy of being home. Kiros and Ward had come to realize that Winhill was truly home to Laguna, and there was no place on earth he had ever been happier. They had to run to keep up with him.  
  
He stopped outside of Raine's window, grinning like a madman, too afraid to call for her. Since sealing the sorceress away, they had all been trained in paranoia.  
  
"So it's you," a voice behind them had said.  
  
Kiros had turned quickly and grabbed his katal. But the man stood his ground, looking at Laguna. Kiros had recognized him as one of the people who lived in the small town. Nearly everyone there had objected to their presence, and especially had something against Laguna, seemingly for taking one of their women away. They were so wary of foreigners, that they almost viewed them as unwelcomed beings from another planet.  
  
The man stood there looking at Laguna for a few moments, then his face had softened into what looked like pity. Thinking back, Kiros realized the man probably had feelings after all, and truly did feel as badly for Laguna as he did for the whole town.  
  
"Where's Raine?" Laguna asked, hopefully and almost shyly. He had always at least tried to be friendly to the people of Winhill, no matter how hard they made it for him. He knew that they loved Raine and he wanted to win them over.  
  
"I'm sorry, son," the man said, trying to sound hard and practical.  
  
Laguna shook his head, as if he didn't understand, though Kiros thought he was beginning to.  
  
"Raine's dead," he said simply. "I'm sorry," he added once more, before turning to walk away.  
  
As if it had happened yesterday, Kiros remembered Laguna stepping back, as if the man's words had physically knocked him backwards. He reached his hand out behind him and braced himself against Ward's shoulder, as he watched the man leave. For some reason, Kiros remembered that small gesture clearly. It would become one of those little details that would bring him right back to that place and time.   
  
He himself wasn't sure he had heard the man correctly, or if he wasn't perhaps dreaming. As he watched the man turn the corner to his home, out of the corner of his eye he'd seen Laguna turn to look at Ward and shake his head slightly as if to say to him, "that's not true, right?"   
  
But Kiros knew it was true, and his heart sank down the ground, just as surely as Laguna had, a second later.  
  
  
Ward had taken Laguna into the abandoned, run down house he'd lived in before moving in with Raine, while Kiros had gone into town to ask just what had happened. No one had wanted very much to talk to him, but they did seem to understand that Laguna had a right to know. He found out that Raine had gone into labor prematurely (a point that he would spend years trying to drive home to Laguna: that he had NOT been late, but the baby had come very early.) The baby had lived, barely, but Raine had died the next day.  
  
The baby was a boy, and the people of Winhill had handed him right over to a couple who had come from an orphanage. The couple, they said, had been searching for Ellone, to keep her from the sorceress. They had taken Ellone as well as Laguna's child. That was the last Kiros had heard, until a few days ago, about an orphanage.  
  
The people of Winhill, Kiros had figured out, didn't even know for certain that they were handing the children over to the right people. They had convinced themselves that they were though, and it was good enough for them. He knew that they only wanted to keep Esthar out of their town, in order to protect their own children. In a way, he almost couldn't blame them. But he hated them at the time, just the same.  
  
Laguna had spent the whole of the next day, and the night after that, sleeping on his wife's grave. He slept there until Ward came and carried him off.  
  
--------  
  
By nightfall, they were in a clearing in the woods, and they could hear the sound of the ocean not very far away.  
  
"You want to change your clothes as soon as we're in seeing distance of the orphanage," Kiros said to Laguna. "Wouldn't want to scare anyone, Bandit," he added with a smile.  
  
Laguna smiled back at Kiros' reference to the Shumi's first impression of him.  
  
Kiros jumped up and grabbed a low hanging branch of a tree and swung his legs up over it. Standing up on the swaying branch, he grabbed the next highest one and did the same. He did this until he was near the top of the tree and could see over the other trees. In the distance, he saw what he thought they must be looking for.  
  
A stone building stood out against the night sky under the moonlight. Kiros was immediately struck by its beauty. The shimmering sea behind it took his breath away. "Wow," he whispered softly. "Some orphanage." It was surrounded by high iron gates and, Kiros guessed, security cameras and guards. He doubted anyone got in without an appointment, which they most definitely didn't have - and didn't have time to get. It wasn't going to be easy.  
  
  
----------------------  
  



	7. Chapter Seven

  
None of the security alarms had been tripped, but Cid Kramer knew something was amiss. Well, many, many things were amiss, he told himself, but something was particularly amiss in his office at that very second. He could feel eyes on him and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.   
  
He turned his swivel chair around and looked behind him, wiping his eyes hastily and hoping that whatever entity was with him, it hadn't seen him crying like a baby.  
  
"Who's here?" he asked mildly, trying to sound neither threatening nor welcoming. There was no answer. "Are you man or beast?" he added almost playfully. "Living or dead?"  
  
"Living," said a voice behind him, from the door to his office. He swung the chair around again, disoriented. Before him stood a very haggard looking man with shoulder length, jet black hair. Something about him reminded Cid of the ravens he sometimes saw perched in the trees around the orphanage. "Sort of,"  
Laguna added wryly.  
  
"Mr. Loire," he said, smiling vaguely, taking in the man's stunned expression. "You didn't have to sneak in; you could have announced yourself."  
  
Laguna stared at him for a moment before opening his mouth to say "You..." He didn't finish the thought, if he had a coherent one.  
  
"Know of you? Of course I know of you. You're one of the men who sealed away the Sorceress Adel. Are the other two with you?"  
  
Laguna seemed about to answer, when the tall, dark skinned man stood up from in front of his desk. How long he had been there, how he had gotten there, Cid could not guess. He only hoped he hadn't heard him crying.   
  
Laguna knocked on the closed door behind him. "Come on in, Ward," he said. The door opened and a tremendous, callous looking man stepped in. He stood stalwartly behind Laguna, as if taking up his usual station in life.  
  
"Gentlemen," Cid said, trying not to sound uncertain, "what brings you here?"  
  
"Well," Laguna said, almost excitedly, "if you know who I am, you probably know why I'm here, right?"  
  
Cid walked slowly from behind his desk and approached Laguna, looking into his eyes. Laguna didn't flinch, but Cid felt that the eyes of the man who had been hiding in front of his desk were on him once more, and he could actually feel him tensing up. He and the other man were obviously terribly protective of Laguna.   
  
Laguna looked at him steadily. Cid couldn't see a hint of malice in his eyes. But there was a lifetime's worth of grief. Cid nodded, mostly to himself. He knew all too well what it meant for a man to lose his wife.  
  
"What if," Cid said slowly, not answering Laguna's question, "there were another sorceress?"  
  
"Then we'd seal her away, too."   
  
Cid was surprised to hear that it was the man behind him who had answered before Laguna. He turned to face him. He was sure the man's name was Seagill. He'd heard it mentioned before. This man, he was a hawk. "Would you?" Cid asked. "Would you go through it all again?"  
  
The man smiled at him without losing the shrewd look in his eyes. Cid might have been unnerved by this, had he not just lived through the most hellish few weeks of his life. He'd seen more unthinkable things in the recent past than he thought was fair for one man to see.   
  
"We don't have much to lose," Seagill said evenly.  
  
Cid decided that he liked him, this hawk, even if he was a little misguided. He turned to Laguna once more. "Mr. Loire," he said kindly, "to answer your question, yes, I do know why you're here. At least, I think I know, and in a way I'm glad you have finally come here. Understand that I couldn't exactly advertise this place with all the crises that are going on concerning children. Please, if you will all follow me to the beach." Cid stood aside and showed them to the door. He hated to see the hopeful and expectant look on Laguna's face, because he did seem like a good man and Cid regretted having to let him down.  
  
He led them outside to a beach where a group of children played.   
  
  
-------------------  
  
  
They stood on the stone steps that led to the sand, where the children couldn't see them right away. Kiros watched as they all played together, with a sweet sort of envy. His own childhood had been somewhat lonely, and even though he'd had a family, he had often wished for a group of friends to play with.   
  
He watched as a little blond boy sat patiently while a little girl with flipped up, brown hair drew on his face with a magic marker.   
  
"There!" she announced when she was finished drawing on him. "It's perfect."  
  
"Great!" the blond boy said. When he turned around, Kiros saw that his face was covered in shaky black lines. He made a loud war cry, and ran off down the beach.  
  
"That boy, with magic marker all over his face" Cid said quietly, "has just been adopted. He doesn't know it yet. I have no idea where he came from; I only know where he's going." He turned to Laguna again. "Only my wife knows where they have come from."  
  
"Where's your wife?" Kiros asked.  
  
Cid hesitated a fraction of a second, but Kiros caught it. "She's gone. She left only a few days ago." He looked up and met Kiros' eyes. "To protect the children."  
  
"Can we find your wife?" Laguna asked, throwing tact to the wind.  
  
"I'm afraid not. The point is, Mr. Loire," Cid said, "since I don't even know where most of these children have come from, I wouldn't know if one of them was yours. And even if I did," he added sadly, and trailed off.  
  
"Even if you did?" Laguna asked.  
  
"The true Sorceress travels from one body to another, as researched by Dr. Odine, whom I think you know. She finds people, girls and women mostly, and inhabits them and uses them, you see. And when she leaves them, she retains what she learned and what she knew before. In other words, the true Sorceress still knows who you are. And I could never run the risk of letting her know who your child was, too. He, or she, would be put in incredible danger."  
  
Laguna didn't answer as he stared down the length of the beach.   
  
"I know," Cid went on, sadly and kindly, "that you're a good man, and that you're probably a very strong man, and brave. If you defeated Adel, you must be; all of you must be. However, you can't defeat the true Sorceress. We have to learn to understand her first, and we're a long way away from that. If you can't defeat her, then there's no way that you could protect your child from her either, should she find you. She had been using Adel when you sealed her away. You tricked her, you hurt her, and you took away her instrument of power. She's not going to forget you."  
  
"So you're saying I'm a danger to my own child," Laguna said harshly.  
  
"I'm sorry," Cid said.  
  
"Yeah," Laguna answered bitterly. "Everyone's sorry. If I had a goddamn gil for everytime someone was sorry they couldn't help me..."  
  
Kiros noticed that the girl with the flipped up hair had seen them, and was watching them talk, with a concerned look on her small features. She approached them without a hint of shyness.   
  
"Hey!" she said to Laguna.   
  
Laguna looked at her and smiled weakly. "Hi," he said, and crouched down to her level.  
  
"You look really sad about something, but you know what?"  
  
"What?" he asked.   
  
"If you weren't so old, I'll bet we'd get married." She batted her eyes shamelessly at him. Then she looked up at Cid. "Could I have ice cream?" she asked.  
  
"You have to wait until after dinner," he said, sounding slightly surprised at her behavior.  
  
"Aw, damn!" she said, and walked away.  
  
"Language, young lady!" Cid called after her. "I can only guess where she learned that," he muttered to himself.  
  
Laguna looked surprised, but was smiling just a little.  
  
-----------------  
  
  
Cid Kramer was right, and Laguna knew it. He was a threat to his own child, just as his presence in Winhill had been a threat to the people there. He swore at himself mentally, and cursed his own life. He wished against wishing that he'd never gone after the sorceress. He had wanted to make the world safe for his child, and for Elle, and for all the children. He'd made the greatest sacrifice he could make (his own life wouldn't be so great a sacrifice, he thought,) and for nothing. He'd sealed one sorceress away, but had only gotten the true Sorceress pissed off.   
  
Cid had been kind enough to put them all up for the night, but Laguna had not been able to sleep, and had gone down to the beach once more. He sat on the stone steps on the beach and looked out over the water. The sound of the ocean made him lonely, but anything was better than the nightmares he'd been having since Julia had died.   
  
He remembered taking Raine to the ocean one time. It was the farthest she'd ever gone from Winhill, and he remembered the strange feeling of her growing nervousness, the farther she got from the town. She got more jittery with every mile he drove. "It's okay, you know, Raine," he'd told her. "Winhill will still be there when we get back."  
  
"I know," she said, and laughed softly.   
  
They'd driven for hours, listening to the radio and talking. At one point, Julia's song had come on the radio, and Laguna had finally told Raine the whole story of what had happened between Julia and himself. She told him it was the sweetest and saddest story she'd ever heard, and he had told her how glad he was that things had turned out the way they had.   
  
When they'd gotten to the ocean, Raine had been amazed. The largest body of water she had ever seen before that had been a placid lake.   
  
"You've sailed on waters like this?" she asked him breathlessly.  
  
"Yup!" he said, taking in her admiration. "A bunch of times! I love it. It's so cool to be on a ship..." He remembered that he had talked at length about the sea, while she listened in rapt attention, before he spontaneously suggested that they spend the night on the beach.  
  
Raine had looked surprised and a little skeptical. "We can't leave Ellone with Aunt Mattie all night!" she'd said, referring to the elderly lady who was watching Elle.  
  
"Why not?" Laguna said. "She's stayed with her before, and Aunt Mattie knows that it's a long way to the ocean."  
  
Raine thought it over, then had come up with another guilt ridden excuse. "I left my flowers outside, what if it gets cold?"  
  
Laguna had taken both her arms and turned her to face him. "You know Raine," he'd said earnestly, "you ARE allowed to have fun and be a little irresponsible once in a while."   
  
She'd laughed and looked down. "Am I that bad?" she'd asked him.  
  
"There's nothing bad about you," he'd said.   
  
In the end they had spent the night on the beach.  
  
  
Laguna folded his arms across his knees and let his head rest on them. He couldn't imagine a future in which he'd ever stop crying over Raine.  
  
  
"Don't run away!" a worried, whispered voice said, startling him. He looked up and at first he didn't see anything. Then, a young blond boy ran out from the room opposite the stairs where he was sitting. The boy wasn't tall enough to see over the high rocks by the steps, but Laguna could see him clearly. The boy turned and looked over his shoulder, and on his face, Laguna saw the most betrayed and desperate expression he'd ever seen on a child. He looked as alone and angry as Laguna felt.   
  
"Go away!" the boy said. "Just leave me the hell alone!"  
  
"Shhh!" the softer voice said. "You'll get us in trouble. You want Cid to get mad?" The owner of the voice, a blond girl, came out of the same room the boy had come from. She was the same age as the boy, around five, but she had a mature demeanor that looked strange on a girl her size.   
  
"You don't understand!" the boy said to her.  
  
She approached him cautiously, as if she didn't want to frighten him off or drive him further away. Laguna was amazed at how careful she was being with him. "I understand just like you do," she said. "I love Matron too."  
  
"I love her best!" the boy argued. "And she's gone forever, and no one did anything to stop her. I heard Cid say she crossed over the sea, and I'm going to get her back!"  
  
"You can't do that!" the girl said, and suddenly she looked panicked.   
  
"Try and stop me," the boy said. But he didn't turn and leave. He stood watching the little girl as if waiting for her to make her next move.  
  
And she did. The girl ran to him and grabbed him. Instead of struggling, as Laguna expected the little boy to do, he broke down sobbing as if his life was over. "Don't tell on me," he whispered.  
  
"I'm not gonna tell," she said, "as long as you stay." She stroked his hair as if she were his mother.  
  
For a moment, he let her hold him. Then suddenly he pushed her away and she fell on the sand. "Leave me alone! Don't baby me!" the boy cried. He turned and ran back into the house.  
  
"Fine!" the girl shouted after him. "Leave!" Then she put her face in her hands and cried too.  
  
  
"I woulda told," a small voice beside Laguna said, making him jump about a foot in the air. He turned to see the little girl with the flipped up hair sitting next to him. "He tells on ev'ryone else," she said.  
  
"You scared me," Laguna said.  
  
"Oops, sorry!" she said. "Why'd you and your friends come here?" she asked. "Are you gonna adopt someone?"  
  
Laguna shook his head. "I'm looking for someone I knew," he said, feeling unsure.  
  
"I guess lotsa people are missing. Matron is gone, she was like our mom. Lotsa the kids left. It started when Sis left."  
  
"Sis?" Laguna asked.  
  
The little girl looked out to the beach and hugged her knees to her chest. "Uh huh, Sis. Elle."  
  
Laguna turned his head quickly in her direction as he felt his insides turn over. "Elle?" he whispered.  
  
"Yup, she was like our Sis and we called her Sis, like for sister, even though she's not. She got taken away and then some kids left and then Matron."  
  
"What happened to Elle?" Laguna asked, hearing his voice tremble.  
  
"A man took her. Cid was mad at first but then he let the man take her. I was kinda scared because they were yelling and stuff."  
  
"What man took her?" Laguna asked, his excitement turning to fear. "Do you know his name?"  
  
"Nope," the girl said.   
  
"Do you remember what he looked like?"  
  
The girl smiled brightly at him. "Sure!"  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter Eight

  
Dr. Odine sat in his study in the Esthar laboratory, staring intently at the readouts on the lucite panel before him. Indeed, his experiments on sorceress related powers were coming along very well. All he had to do was make sure the true Sorceress Ultimecia didn't find out about his studies. He had detected a change in the paramagical power readouts weeks ago, which seemed to indicate that the Sorceress had found a new host. He had hoped that it wasn't true, that perhaps it had more to do with his latest experimental subject's powers. But in the end he knew that there was another sorceress, and Ultimecia had found her. His fears had been confirmed with the news about Cid Kramer's wife being overtaken.   
  
"Vell," he whispered to himself, rubbing his tired eyes, "zere is nothing for it. Nothing yet." But someday, he knew, there would be a way to defeat the true Sorceress. And he was sure he'd be the one to discover the way. Or at least to help discover it.  
  
Garden. It was a thought that kept coming back to him. Cid and Edea Kramer's Garden. SeeD.  
  
"SeeD must be born," he said out loud. He was discovering new ways to use paramagic every day, and this would be his way of watering Garden.   
  
The true Sorceress was a glaring mistake of natural forces. He'd heard of sorceresses in the past who were harmless, or even helpful, but very, very few. Most had been victims to their own power, accidentally turning it in on themselves and destroying themselves. Some had been descended from Hyne, some had had the power forced on them by a stronger sorceress. But most had been entirely self serving entities, and warped, twisted power machines.  
  
Dr. Odine's train of thought was broken by a sound that made his heart beat against his ribcage suddenly. A hard, jagged breath, almost a growl, close behind him. He looked up slowly at the lucite monitor of readouts, and saw the distorted reflection of a disheveled man behind him. Before he could turn around, he felt the barrel of a gun against the back of his neck. The *click* of the trigger being cocked felt like a vertebrae in his neck cracking. He took a deep breath.  
  
"Mr. Loire," he said coolly, "vat are you doing here?"  
  
"Turn around so I can see you," Laguna said harshly.  
  
He turned around to face him and was shocked by what he saw.  
  
When Dr. Odine was young, before his mother had passed away, she used to read to him. He recalled one of his favorite plays she had read to him which, she had told him, had many lessons in it. He remembered his mother reading in their native tongue, the words "tempt not a desperate man," and her voice solemnly explaining to him what that meant. He supposed he'd never fully understood it till this moment.  
  
He expected Laguna to hit him, with his fist or his gun, or to drag him out of the chair, and he prepared himself for it. Instead, Laguna shakily wiped his eyes and forehead on his long sleeve, and asked a question.  
  
"How could you do it?" he asked.  
  
"You cannot shame me, Mr. Loire," Dr. Odine said. "I know zat I am doing ze right thing."  
  
"You're doing experiments on Elle," Laguna said, as if he couldn't believe it. "Was she here the whole time, the last time I was here?" he asked.  
  
Dr. Odine recognized that the man in front of him, pointing a gun at his head, was totally undone, and absolutely ready to pull the trigger.  
  
"Ellone is perfectly safe," he said quickly, trying to control the fear that was rising in him. If he showed his fear, then Laguna might mistake it for guilt. "And zere is a good reason for all of zis, and a good reason vy you should not kill me."  
  
Laguna shook his head slowly and almost absently. "I didn't ask you for a reason," he said in a low whisper.  
  
"Do you know," he said, trying to buy himself some time, "vat vill happen to you if you murder me?"  
  
Laguna stared at him for a second as if he didn't understand what Dr. Odine was getting at. Then he laughed, which made Dr. Odine's insides feel as if they were melting. "I'm a fugitive from so many people right now, Dr.," he said, "one more group isn't gonna hurt me. Besides, I have nothing to lose and you know it." His voice began to rise in anger and, Dr. Odine thought, panic. "You made sure of that when you took Ellone away from me." His hands were shaking and Dr. Odine knew that he could pull the trigger on accident.  
  
"Ellone is a special child, and..."   
  
"Oh yeah?" Laguna said, cutting him off, "I thought she was a stupid brat? Now what would you want with a stupid brat, doc?!" He pushed the gun into Dr. Odine's face. "To hell with this," he said, "why am I wasting my time with you?"  
  
"Ellone can lead ze vay to defeating ze true Sorceress," Odine said quickly, trying to distract him with a grand statement. "She, she alone holds ze key to the future. She is a time traveler."  
  
Laguna blinked the tears out of his eyes, but didn't say anything, and more importantly, Odine thought, didn't pull the trigger.   
  
"She sees things on her dream travels. I have reason to believe zat zis is true time travel, and not merely psychic intuition, for she speaks vith others from zat time, zat are alive in zat time. She sees a vorld taken over by ze true Sorceress, ze sorceress Ultimecia. She sees ze coming of a vorld in which time is compressed, and all existence is denied save zat of Sorceress Ultimecia; she says zere are people zere zat she knows and loves, in danger. Mr. Loire, she sees your son in zat time."  
  
*BANG!* The echo of the bullet that had ricocheted off the wall to the side made Dr. Odine's ears ring. When his heart started beating again, he saw that Laguna had dropped the gun to the floor.  
  
  
--------------------------------  
  
  
  
Kiros paced outside the door on the roof of the Esthar Laboratory. There had been a guard up there, but he was fast asleep and locked inside the building. He had to admit, the paramagic that Dr. Odine had taught them a few years ago did come in handy. He had let Ward use the Sleep spell on the guard, simply because Laguna was in no state to cast, and because he himself usually drew magic from others, while his two comrades cast it. It felt more natural to him to be receptive, at any rate. Ward didn't like to take the time to draw magic, and Laguna sometimes jumped the gun and got the timing wrong.  
  
However, he did find that drawing magic continually for long periods of time was exhausting, moreso than casting it. He had always meant to ask Dr. Odine why that was. But as of now, he entertained the idea that he might never get to ask Dr. Odine anything, depending on what the doctor said to Laguna.  
  
Laguna had asked to go in alone, after assuring them that he knew exactly what he was doing, concerning Dr. Odine. Ward had been hesitant to let him go alone, as out of control as he seemed to be. But as far as Kiros was concerned, the Dr. had kidnapped a little girl, Laguna's only living relative (for he did consider Ellone to be Laguna's family, since he had practically raised her.) He didn't care what came of his experiments, either. It was just as wrong for him to take Ellone and use her, as it was for the sorceress to do the same thing. Ward had seen the reason in this, and in the need for him to guard the front door, and finally relented.   
  
Besides, Kiros thought, Laguna might be right on the edge, but even so, he was no fool. He would know exactly what he had to do.   
  
Kiros stopped pacing and looked out over the city of Esthar. Esthar City proper was a lively and interesting city, but it was bordered by a wasteland. On the outskirts of Esthar City was an expanse of murky, rusty sand. It wasn't beautiful, like a normal desert. Instead it looked like a junkyard of dirt and rocks. He thought about what it would be like to walk across that rusty sand for days on end, with nothing in sight but miles more of it. It depressed him, and he was just about to think how much better he liked Esthar City as compared to its outskirts, when Esthar City was gone.  
  
He turned around quickly and dizzily as the sand spread out on front of him. The air was heavy with magic, so heavy and thick with it that he couldn't breathe. He reached for his katal and found both of them at once, before realizing that the first thing he should have done was try to draw a protective magic, such as Shell, from whatever magic being or monster was around him, and cast it on himself.  
  
As an afterthought, he reached out mentally and looked for something to draw from, and instead, felt the cold veil of Silence swallow him.  
  
Kiros had had Silence cast on him a few times before. The first time it had happened had been right after he, Laguna and Ward had learned about paramagic. They had spent an entire day casting magic on each other, so they could understand what it felt like. He'd let Laguna cast Silence on him that time, and what had made him nervous was that he couldn't use magic to counteract it, and he couldn't ask Laguna to undo it. Ward had commented that Kiros was quiet enough and didn't need such a spell on him - this was before Ward had, in a form, had Silence cast on him for the rest of his life.   
  
They'd experimented with it in Dr. Odine's laboratory, and when the Dr. had found out that they were using magic recklessly on each other, he'd scolded them all for it, telling them it was not a new toy, but a delicate power not to be wasted. In the end though, it had been very helpful for all three of them to get a feel for what they would soon be doing on the battlefield, even if Laguna had learned the hard way that it was dangerous to cast Confuse on a man as large and powerful as Ward.  
  
And from those early experiments, Kiros had learned what Silence felt like. But he wasn't prepared for power of this magnitude, and he knew right away that it had been cast on him by a sorceress.  
  
  
-------------------  
  
  
"Uncle Laguna, please don't cry," Ellone said.  
  
He picked her up and hugged her.  
  
"Don't you think I'm too big to be carried?" she asked, but put her arms around his neck anyway.  
  
"Yeah, you got big," he managed to say. "I just missed you." He put her back down. "I'm kinda afraid that if I let you go someone will steal you again."  
  
She took both his hands in hers, and Laguna was a little unnerved by the maturity that was now in her eyes. "Uncle Laguna," she said earnestly, "I was the one who decided to go with Dr. Odine. I know I can help him learn things about the true Sorceress. When I lived at the orphanage, everything was really nice, Uncle Laguna," she said. "I missed you all the time, but I made friends too. I thought about you and Aunt Raine every day, but I had people to keep me company, you know, all those kids. I sort of helped take care of them."  
  
Laguna took a deep breath and nodded, but didn't know what to say. Ellone had gone from being a baby to being a well spoken, responsible girl. It wasn't right. He'd missed the years in between. He let her continue.  
  
"I had to leave because the sorceress found out I was there. All the kids I was with are scattered because, I guess because they have to go to school to learn how to kill the true Sorceress. At first Cid didn't want me to leave, but then it only made sense for me to go. All the other kids are going to Garden. But since the true Sorceress is after me most of all, I have to hide from her. I have to learn different things than they do, to protect myself."  
  
Laguna couldn't believe he was hearing a nine year old girl relate a story of personal loss in such an accepting tone, merely because she had a responsibility to the other children in her life. It was wrong. This couldn't be Ellone, telling him about the sacrifices she had to make for the world and for the safety of her friends.  
  
"But I'm happy now though, Uncle Laguna," she said suddenly. "Because I can stay with you now."  
  
Laguna was physically startled by what she had said. It hadn't occurred to him until she mentioned it that she might not stay with him. "That's right," he said, trying not to sound too emotional. But, he wasn't sure exactly what she meant. Was she telling him that she would stay with him? Or that she would stay at the Esthar Laboratory, having experiments done on her like a willing lab animal, and he would visit her once in a while? No. Under no circumstances. He wouldn't allow it, even if it was what she wanted. It wasn't a life for a child.  
  
"The sorceress is after us both now," she said. "We have to stay together."  
  
Laguna breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
"But we have to help Dr. Odine find things out about the true Sorceress. I really don't wanna stay in the laboratory though, so maybe we can all go somewhere else and besides, it's not going to be too safe here for long. Dr. Odine is nice to me, even though he's stupid sometimes and he annoys me. Then I just stare at him until he gets scared." She giggled before continuing. "Uncle Laguna," she said suddenly, "were you gonna kill Dr. Odine?" She looked into his eyes as if to tell him that she would know if he was lying.  
  
Laguna met her gaze evenly. "If he hurt you, I was," he told her. "And it's not 'gonna,' it's 'going to.' Don't start talking like me again," he added with a smile.  
  
  
  



	9. Chapter Nine

  
  
Kiros tried to look around him, but his vision was blurred and hazy. Then he realized that it wasn't his vision that was blurred and hazy, but the land, the sky and the air in front of him. It was slurring and moving drunkenly, as if it had a life of its own. Kiros took a step back and gripped both katal in his hands, readying one of them for the first strike.  
  
The air, sky and ground swayed outward, then seemed to heave a sigh of relief as it split before his eyes. And out of the split in the world stepped a beautiful woman.   
  
She was nothing like Adel. Adel had been inhuman, with coarse, monstrous features. This sorceress didn't walk as much as she glided forward. Her features were delicate and refined, and somehow this made the cold cruelty stamped on her features even more frightening.  
  
She stopped a few yards in front of him, and Kiros couldn't tell if she was looking at him, or looking behind him. She seemed to be looking in his direction, but there was no indication on her face that she saw him at all.  
  
Then she smiled. It was more of a silky smirk than a smile, full of superiority and icy power. She advanced closer to him and he held his katal up, defensively.  
  
"Blades?" she said.  
  
Could he have spoken at the moment, he would have had no words to describe her voice. Or rather, her voices, as it seemed to him that she spoke with two voices at once. One was a slightly higher register than the other, and had an echo. The other, deeper voice spoke with an echo that sounded backwards, as if the echo slurred into the words before she said them, and it disoriented him to the point of never wanting to hear such a thing again.   
  
"You think that blades will effect me?"  
  
Kiros wanted to scream, but he knew he couldn't. He wanted to ask her to stop talking, but couldn't make a sound aside from his shaky breathing. He knew that blades probably couldn't affect her, but it was all he had, and he couldn't let her kill him without even trying to fight first.  
  
"Kill you?" she said.  
  
The idea that she was reading his mind would have been enough to terrorize him, but then she laughed. Her laughter felt like a shard of ice in his spine. He fell back a few steps, and felt a wall at his back. He turned around quickly to look what he had backed into, but the desert still stood behind him. It was as if he had staggered into a backdrop.   
  
"Why would I want to kill you, a pretty desert boy?" She walked closer to him, so close that he could look into her eyes and feel the chill around her. "Would you like me to kill you?" she asked teasingly. "Should I kill you? Have you done anything for which you deserve death?"  
  
He tried to tell her no as quickly as he could, but could only manage to shake his head.  
  
"You would like to speak, wouldn't you?" she asked, still smiling vaguely.   
  
Kiros tried in vain to clear his mind, so that she wouldn't be able to find anything he wanted to keep from her, which, at the moment, was everything. He tried to take deep, steadying breaths, but the air was so cold that it hurt his lungs. He realized that the cold air was coming from her.  
  
"I want you to be silent," she said, and ran her long fingernails over his lips.   
  
Kiros struggled to stand up as she touched him. It made him cold - deeply, viscerally cold. He leaned against the desert wall behind him for support.  
  
"You imprisoned a sorceress," she whispered.   
  
Kiros braced himself and closed his eyes.   
  
"A venial error," she went on. "One that I could have someday prevented if I wanted to. You wonder how I could prevent something from happening that has happened already. I don't expect you to understand; a simple, mortal soldier in an inconsequential army fighting in an inconsequential war. That's alright," she whispered, her face near his, "pretty desert boy. You don't have to try to understand anymore."  
  
Through his fear, he wondered what she was getting at.  
  
With her terribly cold hand, she closed his eyes. He could still see the desert though, seemingly through his closed eyes, and the desert twisted. In a sickening, spiraling mass, the desert twisted around him, and when it unraveled itself again, it faded to hazy black with vague colors of light shining into it.  
  
He opened his eyes, and was looking up at a glaringly blue sky.   
  
He sat up quickly. Too quickly, and the combination of disorientation, sudden movement and brightness made him have to steady himself with his hands on the warm sand. It was no longer murky, rusty sand, but an expanse of crisp, perfect, yellow gold sand.   
  
He was home. He looked down at himself and saw that he was wearing a light, white suit that sheltered him from the sun.  
  
And he saw also that he was a child. He jumped up quickly and tried to scream, but still couldn't make a sound.   
  
"Kiros!"  
  
He looked up quickly and saw a tall, willowy woman running toward him. Her hair, as black as coal, only finer and softer than his own, was disheveled around her shoulders. Bruises and welts stood out on her dark olive skin.   
  
His mother had never looked so frightened.  
  
"Kiros, run!" she screamed.   
  
The sorceress, Esthar, and in fact his entire adult life forgotten, Kiros ran to his mother.  
  
She grabbed him when they reached each other, and began to run with him. But why? What had hurt her and made her run away?   
  
"WOMAN!" a man's huge voice bellowed.   
  
She turned to look over her shoulder at their pursuer and almost fell.   
  
Kiros squirmed out of her arms. Whoever had done this to her, he was going to face him and make him pay. He didn't care if it was an adult or even a giant or a monster. He took his two knives from the backpack on his shoulders, the knives with which he had practiced his fighting skills for weeks, and he turned to face his mother's assailant.  
  
It was his father. His heroic, beloved father, who now ran towards him like a monster from his nightmares.  
  
  
"You see, desert boy," a soft, comforting voice told him, "you have nothing to lose, and nothing else to hold on to. Everything you love has betrayed you or died."  
  
His mother and father disappeared, along with the desert, and he was left in the dark with only the voice for comfort. He sought it out.   
  
"That's right," the voice said gently, accompanied by a soft glow in the distance. He ran towards it, and it grew in size, at a rate disproportionate with his running. By the time he reached it, it had become a vignette of the murky, rusty desert. It was a doorway into that place and time, but Kiros didn't know exactly what place and time it was.  
  
"Come through with me," she said, "my knight."  
  
Kiros stepped through the doorway, and into the cold arms of the sorceress.  
  
  
-----------------------------------   
  
  
"NO!" Ward tried in vain to shout. Later, he would realize that it was better that he didn't shout, otherwise he might have turned the sorceress' attention to him, and as wrong as it seemed at the moment, he needed her attention right where it was: concentrated on Kiros.  
  
Ward had been standing guard in the front hall of Esthar Laboratory when he'd seen what he thought of as "the shimmer." He'd witnessed it once before with Kiros and Laguna, just before they'd locked Adel away. It almost looked like an intense wave of heat rising from the ground, that made everything look wavy and shiny. The only difference was that this was much more intense, and only lasted for a moment.   
  
Ward knew that it meant a sorceress had just cast magic. A moment later he could smell magic in the air and sense it, and he knew it was coming from the rooftop where Kiros was. As he ran to the lift to the roof, he felt inside the pocket of his jacket and made sure he had Phoenix Down with him.  
  
Ward crashed through the door that lead to the rooftop, after putting all of his mighty weight behind it and breaking it down. When he saw Kiros fall towards what must have been a sorceress, was when he tried to scream. She was holding her arms out to him as if she meant to catch him, but instead she let him fall, so that it looked like he was on the ground worshipping her. He supposed later on that that was the idea.  
  
Ward charged toward the sorceress and threw his spear right through her back. She arched her back momentarily as the spear entered her, and turned around to face him.  
  
As she turned, just before her eyes met his, the spear came out through her front and landed on the ground next to Kiros.   
  
Ward saw her eyes first, then his own eyes were drawn to the dark red stain spreading on the front of her dress. He watched, as if in slow time, as the hole through her middle sealed up. But there was a flicker of something in her eyes, almost like recognition, and something else that Ward couldn't quite place and didn't care to at the moment.  
  
His mind worked furiously at what his next move was going to be, and he was becoming certain that it would probably be his last, when the sorceress turned and cast Esuna on Kiros, breaking his Silence. The air shimmered, but Kiros continued to lie face down without moving.  
  
The sorceress turned to Ward once more, and Ward recognized that the look in her eyes he couldn't place before was fear. Her lips moved for a moment as if she was struggling to speak.  
  
"Go!" she finally said.  
  
Ward didn't have to be told twice. He ran to Kiros, getting too close to the sorceress for his own comfort. For all he knew, it could be a trap, but he couldn't leave without Kiros. He dragged him up and threw him clumsily over his shoulder, noticing that he felt cold, wondering vaguely if he was actually too cold to live very long, and storing the worry away until they both escaped with their lives. He was about to run, but Kiros was twisting out of his grip. He twisted so hard that Ward finally had to let him go and hope the idiot would actually be able to keep up. Kiros swayed for a moment and fell back down.  
  
Ward went to pick him up again but Kiros waved him off. Ward didn't have time to gesture the thought "are you insane," as he began trying to drag Kiros away.  
  
"Wait!" Kiros said sharply.  
  
The sorceress stood trembling in front of them, her small features twisted in what could only have been pain.   
  
She fell to her knees in front of Kiros. "What are you doing?" she asked him, in a panicked voice. "Get out of here!" she hissed.  
  
"My..." Kiros began, but his teeth were chattering too hard for him to complete the word.  
  
The sorceress seemed to be trying to cry, but could only manage strangled sobs. "You have to leave," she said, "right now!"  
  
"My father," Kiros finally managed, while Ward wondered what the hell was happening. "Never," Kiros continued, "never did... that..." he said, looking up into the sorceress' face. "...is... a good man..." He fought to stop shivering and went on. "Just wanted... you to know..."  
  
"I'm sorry," she cried. She reached both her hands out to his face, then stopped herself and looked at her own hands as if she was horrified by the sight of them. "I can't touch anybody," she said, and then she doubled over, wrapping her arms around her waist. She looked at Ward, and appealed to him with her eyes to run away.  
  
Ward was more than willing to comply. He grabbed Kiros once more and threw him easily over his wide shoulders.   
  
"Ward Zabac!" the sorceress cried suddenly, as Ward turned away. He turned back to face her, stunned that she had said his name with such clarity and will.  
  
"Listen to me before you go, as this will likely be the last time I ever speak as Edea Kramer."  
  
Ward nodded numbly and felt Kiros pick his head up sharply to look at her. He remembered Cid saying that his wife had left to protect the children. He'd had no idea that she was protecting them from herself.  
  
"No time to tell you everything," she breathed. "But go to Balamb first, I have no power in the Garden. But the little girl mustn't stay with the other children. Hide her, but learn from her..." Her face twisted in pain once more and she lowered her head, gesturing weakly toward the door on the rooftop with her hand. "Leave," she breathed. Then she fell forward, landing hard on the rooftop. She writhed and cried out in pain.   
  
Ward hesitated. He wondered how he was going to leave her to suffer in the true Sorceress' grip.  
  
"Can't we... help..." Kiros stuttered, still hanging limply over Ward's shoulders.  
  
Ward shook his head briskly. If one of his best friends hadn't been possibly freezing to death in his grip, he might have hesitated long enough to find out if he could help, or if he'd be killed, or worse. Rationally, he knew they had to get the hell out as quickly as they could. But it was so hard for him to turn his back on the anguished woman.  
  
Terribly aware of the chill coming from Kiros, he turned and fled down the stairs.  
  
  



	10. Chapter ten

  
Laguna watched quietly as Dr. Odine wrung his hands nervously, and paced the floor.   
  
"Ve vill, of course," he said to Laguna, "have to find a way to vork together in zis endeavor."  
  
Laguna glared at him.  
  
"She's here," Ellone said suddenly, as she stood between the two men. "The air feels funny."  
  
Laguna looked at her sharply, and Dr. Odine went as white as his lab coat.  
  
"Ward and Kiros," Elle whispered to Laguna.  
  
"Are they hurt?" he asked, starting toward the door.  
  
"On the rooftop," she said. "She's after me, but... she's trying to get something else first. I don't understand!"  
  
Laguna was torn between leaving Ellone with Dr. Odine, on the chance that the sorceress made her way to the lab before he found her, and going to help his friends.   
  
"I don't understand," Elle repeated, her face twisting with confusion. "She wants something from him, from Kiros... something grown up. Uncle Laguna! Go!"  
  
Going only on Elle's certainty that at the moment the sorceress was more interested in Kiros than in her, Laguna ran for the door.  
  
He was halfway up the stairs to the roof when he heard the unmistakable sound of Ward running down them. The concrete steps trembled slightly. "Ward!" he called out, partly to let him know he was coming up, to avoid a collision.  
  
In a moment, Ward was in sight, with Kiros draped over his shoulder.  
  
"What's going on?" Laguna asked, but Ward swept him along by the arm as he ran past. "Ward! Is Kiros alright?" he called out as he ran, or rather, was dragged, behind Ward. He had never wished so badly that Ward could speak.  
  
Ward almost ran past the door that led to the floor where Elle and Dr. Odine were, but Laguna pulled him back quickly. "Elle's here, we have to get out. Is the sorceress up there?"  
  
Ward nodded hurriedly as they fled through the doorway, back into the room where the other two were waiting.  
  
Ellone and Dr. Odine both jumped when they came charging through the door. Laguna was relieved to see Kiros squirm out of Ward's grasp and stand shakily next to him. "Airship," he said softly.  
  
"Is ze sorceress truly here?" Odine asked fearfully.  
  
"YES!" Laguna, Kiros and Ellone all screamed at him.   
  
"Zen ve must go! Follow me to ze ground floor, ve vill find immediate transport!"  
  
They were out the door of the lab when Dr. Odine slowed to a stop, and turned back wistfully. "It is a shame," he said, almost under his breath, "zat ve cannot study zis specimen."  
  
"She's NOT a specimen!" Ellone shouted, stopping as well. Laguna picked her up and kept walking to the stairs. "She's not a specimen Dr. Odine!" Ellone shouted over Laguna's shoulder, suddenly furious. "She's just a lady and she can't help what she became!"  
  
"Leave him there!" Laguna said harshly, running down the stairs still carrying Ellone, followed by Kiros and Ward.  
  
But the doctor seemed to change his mind at the last minute, and followed.  
  
  
------------------------  
  
"What does it mean to be a knight?" Ellone asked sleepily, as she lay down in the back of the van. Laguna sat next to her on the long seat, which stretched from the back of the front seat, almost to the back door.  
  
They passed under a street light, and for a moment it illuminated the faces of everyone in the car. In the rear view mirror, Ward saw Laguna frown. "I thought you were sleeping," he said quietly.  
  
Suddenly Kiros, who had been sleeping on the long seat across from them, moved up slowly, so that he was half reclining on the seat. He was still holding the shabby blanket around his shoulders. Since he was directly behind the driver's seat, Ward couldn't see his face, but he seemed suddenly interested in Ellone.   
  
The car was warm, much too warm for Ward's comfort, but he knew Kiros was still cold. And Kiros hated being cold. The steady hum of the van was comforting, but it made him tired. In a few minutes he would ask Laguna to switch with him and drive for a while.   
  
Dr. Odine, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to Ward, turned around in the seat so that he could speak with Ellone.  
  
"To be a knight," he mused in his heavy accent, in an almost dreamlike tone that Ward would have never expected to hear from him. "It means so many, many things," he answered. "Some time ago, to be a knight meant to defend and protect royalty, and zere land. To uphold its honor."  
  
Laguna snorted and shook his head. "What would you know about honor?" he asked sharply.  
  
Ward heard Dr. Odine sigh softly. "I know zat it drives men to do irrational things, and to not use zere heads. I know it has been ze downfall of many men who only think zey are doing vat is right, when vat zey are really doing, is blindly following an ideal, or a person. Zat if zey would take a moment to think for themselves, to look at things through an impartial eye, zey might see if zey are being led astray."  
  
Ellone sat up sleepily and looked at Dr. Odine. The streetlight briefly lit up her young, curious face in the rear view mirror, before the car was dark once again. "So is it bad to be someone's knight?"  
  
Kiros sat all the way up too, and watched Elle intently.   
  
"No," Odine answered firmly. "Not all ze time. Zere is good and bad to everything, Elle. A right and wrong vay to deal vith all of zese ideas. When you idealize a person, or an idea, zen you are blind, here..." he pointed to his head, "and here as vell." He pointed to his heart, as the car passed under another light. "But, if a knight can remain true to vat he knows is ze right choice, to vat vill bring good, even if it is not ze most desirable vay, zen he vill be an honorable man."  
  
Ellone regarded him solemnly, and Ward found himself surprised at the easy understanding Odine seemed to have with Ellone. In a million years, he never would have guessed that they spoke to each other conversationally. Ellone seemed perfectly comfortable with him.  
  
"Can a woman have a knight all to herself?" she asked.  
  
They passed under another light, during which Ward glanced at Laguna, and saw that he, too, was carefully watching the interplay between Ellone and Odine. Kiros leaned forward far enough in the seat so that Ward could see his face. His eyes were fixed on Ellone.  
  
Suddenly Odine sighed in exaggerated exasperation. "Vat gives you zese ideas?" he scoffed. "For a child to be asking such questions! Vy not read a book instead?"  
  
"Oh, bite me," Ellone muttered.   
  
Instead of scolding her, Laguna broke into laughter.  
  
  
  



	11. Chapter Eleven

  
Childhood definitely was wasted on the young, Kiros thought, and was surprised at the bitterness of his own thoughts. He'd never thought that way before. But, watching the little tawny haired boy run around the spacious hallway in an oversized cowboy hat, he realized that he felt just a little jealous. He scolded himself for being jealous of orphans, especially when he himself had had a happy family.   
  
But these children seemed to have enough in each other; at least most of them did. And now they were here in this beautiful Garden, playing, and toying carelessly with time as if it would never run out on them... And looking forward to an admittedly trying life, full of difficult lessons and doubt. They would probably even lose each other at some time.   
  
But they also had freedom; a wild sort of freedom that came with having no ties, no responsibility to family, and no single place that would demand their return. A sad and desperate freedom, maybe...   
  
Kiros found he was thinking of his own childhood. He realized that he'd gotten to do all of the things a child should get to do. So why did he suddenly feel so mournful over it?  
  
He supposed it had to do with the sorceress and the things she had shown him. She'd twisted his memories of his family and tried to make him believe lies, so that he would feel as lonely and desperate as she needed him to feel. And he knew those things weren't true. But, in doing so, she had brought so many other things to light, things he had never considered. Things he now missed, like the desert, the dry air, and the hot sand in his hands.   
  
He suddenly felt sorrowful over the fact that he would only live it once, and could never, ever go back to that time. He would do so many things differently if he had the chance. Most of all he would be aware of it. He would be aware of every fleeting second of his childhood, instead of carelessly letting time slip by.   
  
  
"You look sad," said a little girl's voice. He didn't know why he expected to see Ellone - maybe because the voice sounded older, at least older than the little blonde child who stood next to him, peering over the railing and watching the other children.   
  
He shrugged and smiled at her. He'd seen her at the Kramers' orphanage during the brief time they'd spent there. "I guess I'm just feeling a little old," he said.  
  
She sighed. "Me too," she said, and leaned her chin on the railing.  
  
The absurdity of her comment made him want to laugh, but he held back, for fear of hurting her feelings. "Why do you feel old?" he asked.  
  
"Because I'm the oldest kid here out of the ones from our orphanage, since Sis can't stay. I don't get to play with them."  
  
Kiros looked down at her. She didn't look any older than the others that he remembered from there. "Why can't you play with them?"  
  
"'Cause I guess I'm gonna be in different classes and, I don't know. I just don't play right. Those kids like me and everything, but I guess I don't make sense to them sometimes. They have more fun when they play without me."  
  
She looked up and tried to smile easily, but didn't manage it. There was sadness beyond words in her face, and loneliness that he knew didn't end when you grew up, no matter how much it seemed like it would.  
  
"Well," he said, "this place looks like a great new opportunity, right? Other kids will be here soon, and maybe they'll be able to keep up with you."  
  
"Maybe," she said dully. "So, why are you sad?"  
  
Kiros had forgotten about his own troubles, which suddenly seemed trivial. "Just thinking about when I was your age," he said.  
  
"Were you an orphan?" she asked.  
  
"No," he said, with a small measure of guilt, "actually both my parents are still alive. I guess I had it easy."  
  
"Then why does it make you sad?"  
  
"I guess I miss it."  
  
"Oh," she said, almost as if she were familiar with the idea. "But it must be great to be grown up, too."  
  
"Sometimes," he said. "It is great, in some ways. But sometimes I wish I could go back and be your age, only if I got to, I guess I'd think about it more."  
  
"'Think about it more?'" she repeated. "Why?"  
  
"So that I would always know how great it was, and I wouldn't waste any of it."  
  
"But then you would waste it," she said quickly. "I mean if all you did was make yourself think about how great it was all the time, then you'd miss everything and you'd just sit there thinking. It'd be boring and it'd make you weird."  
  
Kiros opened his mouth to answer, but realized he didn't have anything to say. She was absolutely, perfectly right. Letting it slip by absently was the only right way to do it. Instead of answering, he only nodded.   
  
"If you thought that hard about things," she said, "you'd be stranger than me. You'd be like him." She pointed to a child who sat alone on a bench on the ground floor. "He's nice and I really like him, but since Sis left all he does is think, he never talks or plays anymore. I guess he is kinda like me, maybe."  
  
Kiros looked at the little boy. He looked overwhelmed and lost. "You're right," he said. "I never thought about it like that before."  
  
"And anyway, you're not really too old," she said, still staring at the boy on the bench. "You're still kinda young I think. It's not like you're a hundred or anything. You and your friends should play a game. That'd make you feel better. I never understand why grownups don't play anymore, it's like they all think other grownups will think they're stupid."  
  
Kiros laughed. She had another good point. "You'd make a good teacher," he said.  
  
"Yeah," she said, some of the dullness coming back into her voice, "that's what they tell me." Then she looked up at him and smiled. "I have to go look for the cafeteria," she said. "All the other kids are hungry cause it was a long ride. It was nice talking to you." She held out her tiny hand, all five or six years of her, like a perfectly formal adult.  
  
Kiros shook her hand, a little surprised that she shook hands like an adult too, brisk and businesslike. "Good luck," he said. "And thanks for the advice, too."  
  
"You too," she said seriously. "Take care."  
  
Kiros watched her walk toward the stairs like a little soldier, then turned his attention briefly to the boy on the bench. He was looking all around him as if he expected to see someone or something familiar.  
  
  
"Who was that?"  
  
Kiros turned to see Laguna watching him with a bemused smile. "One of these Garden kids," he said. "We were having a chat. She cheered me up."  
  
Laguna looked in his eyes. "What happened to you with that sorceress?" he asked. His journalist's instinct had never left him, and Kiros hated when Laguna suddenly knew the truth about everything. It was impossible to keep secrets from him.  
  
"The sorceress... It's not anything important," he said. He thought about the losses Laguna had faced in his lifetime, and thought again about the orphans who would spend most of their childhood training to kill. "It's nothing," he said with a smile.  
  
"You're smiling," Laguna said suspiciously. "So I know you're depressed."  
  
"What? I smile," Kiros protested.  
  
"That superior half smile that gets you into fights," he said.  
  
Kiros snorted dismissively looked away. He had things to worry about other than his own neuroses, and he hoped that Laguna would let the subject drop.   
  
After a moment, he caught sight of Ellone, who approached them from the stairs. She looked much too serious, and he knew it a split second that something was wrong. She met Kiros' eyes with her own worried ones, then looked to Laguna. Kiros followed her gaze.  
  
Laguna was staring out to the ground floor in rapt attention. Kiros heard Ellone breathe the word, "no."  
  
Laguna was staring at the little boy. Kiros could see him trembling. He looked back at the boy, and an instant after finally taking in the whole scene - the black hair, the sharp features, the edgy demeanor - he knew. Laguna knew. Once you looked, there was no way to miss it.  
  
"Uncle Laguna," Ellone said softly, but so sharply that it almost sounded like she was scolding him.  
  
Laguna turned around to face her, with tears streaming down his face. He looked as if he was struggling to find words, but for what, he didn't seem to know.  
  
"Uncle Laguna, you can't," she said, and Kiros saw that she was crying too. She walked up to both of them slowly, and seemed to look to Kiros for support. But if she was asking him to agree with her, he couldn't.  
  
"I have to," Laguna said harshly.  
  
"But you can't," she repeated, her voice heavy with regret. "The future needs him. He needs to be who Garden will make him. I saw it with my own eyes," she said.  
  
"He can be," Laguna said, casting a desperate glance back at the boy. "He can come with us and still learn and be a SeeD..."  
  
Ellone was shaking her head. She tugged on Laguna's hands to pull him down to her level. He went on his knees and she hugged him. "He couldn't be the person he has to be," she said. "Plus the true Sorceress... she knows us, me and you and Kiros and Ward and stupid Dr. Odine. We need to keep running away from her. He'd be in danger if he came with us." She was petting Laguna's hair as if she were his mother, and not the child he had raised with his wife. Laguna let her, as she cried into his hair. "I have to leave him too," she said bitterly. "And I love him, too."  
  
Kiros looked again at the boy on the bench, who had seemed to have resigned himself to curiously watching everyone who passed him. He couldn't keep staring at him, knowing who he was. He looked away and saw Ward standing at the top of the steps. His face told Kiros that he also knew what had happened. Whether he had heard the conversation, or found out from Cid, Kiros didn't know. He looked helplessly at Ward, wanting to ask him if there wasn't anything, anything in the world that they could do to change this for Laguna. Ward met his eyes solemnly and shook his head slowly.  
  
Laguna sat back on his heels and Ellone wiped his eyes with her sleeve. Then he looked up at Ward, before closing his eyes and turning his head away. After a moment, he stood up slowly and walked away.  
  
  
  



	12. Chapter Twelve

  
There was something that had brought Kiros out of Deling City and into Timber, and for a moment he couldn't remember what it was. Then it came to him. Tonberry knives and the katal. That had been weeks ago. Well, he supposed he'd get that done at some point. With the new sorceress gaining more power, there were bound to be more Tonberries around. Not that there was anything even remotely good about that, he mused, as he waited for Dr. Odine and Laguna to finish their business with Cid Kramer before leaving the Garden. He supposed that Laguna had a lot to talk about with Mr. Kramer. So did Odine in fact, since he would have to find a way to feed what he learned about paramagic to the network of teachers at Garden. But Dr. Odine and paramagic were a silly afterthought to what Laguna would have to face.  
  
"I guess we're leaving soon," Ellone said, as she stood in the doorway between two automatic doors. She had been sullenly amusing herself by walking from one door to another, making them open and close silently.  
  
"I guess we are," Kiros said. "We're on the run again."  
  
Ellone nodded. "It won't be that bad." She smiled.   
  
Kiros smiled back, wishing he were as resilient as any of the children in this place.   
  
"Except for Uncle Laguna. And him." She nodded toward the inside of the Garden, where workmen seemed to be drawing plans for some kind of fountain. In the center, sitting on the floor, was the little boy. "He's going to be sad. Dr. Odine read me a book once. It had all this stupid stuff about Fate. But maybe that's for real." Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked away.  
  
Fate and loss, Kiros mused. A nine year old child who would live much of her life with three ex soldiers and a scientist, after giving up the rest of her loved ones, was talking about Fate and loss. He wondered how she would remember these times when she looked back, when her own childhood ended.  
  
He also wondered if the rest of her childhood and her adult life would be surrounded with violence and paranoia. He knew it wasn't going to be easy, but that he, Ward, Laguna and perhaps even Odine would to their best to shelter her from that sort of life. At least she would have someone.   
  
He hoped the same could be said for the little boy.  
  
He suddenly looked at Ellone, and realized he had never even thought to ask her the question that had come to him suddenly. She was still staring at the boy, but had stopped crying.  
  
"Elle," he said softly, "what's his name?"  
  
She turned to him with a suddenly brilliant smile. "When they took us to the orphanage," she said, sounding much older than she was, "they asked me that. I named him, and I called him after Aunt Raine." She gazed at the boy again, who briefly looked back at her one last time. She smiled softly and waved at him. "Squall," she said. "His name is Squall."  
  
--------------------------------  
End ^_^  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
